The Obama Effect

Way back in December 2009, I wrote a post called It's Good to Be The King.  The post was about Obama's Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech (the concept was hilarious at the time, and it's only gotten funnier since) -- in which Obama took a bow because, as he put it, "I prohibited torture."  I said:

This paragraph is pleasant on the surface, and poisonous underneath. Obama has no more power to prohibit torture than Bush had to permit it. Torture is illegal in America. The law, not the president, is what prohibits torture. What would you make of it if the president said, "That is why I prohibited murder. That is why I prohibited rape. That is why I prohibited embezzlement, and mail fraud, and tax evasion."

And today we have the exciting and completely unsurprising news that what President A unilaterally prohibits, President B might unilaterally permit:

Mr. Romney's advisers have privately urged him to "rescind and replace President Obama's executive order" and permit secret "enhanced interrogation techniques against high-value detainees that are safe, legal and effective in generating intelligence to save American lives," according to an internal Romney campaign memorandum.

(By the way, you really have to admire all the Orwellian verbiage in that memo.  Did the Romney people suspect it might leak?  Or is the bullshit primarily intended for internal consumption?)

As the Times article puts it, "the future of American government practices when interrogating high-level terrorism suspects appears likely to turn on the outcome of the presidential election."  Indeed, and I don't know why so many people have so much trouble understanding this.  If you support a power in the hands of a President Obama, you are supporting it too in the hands of a President Romney, or Bachmann, or Palin.  If you support such a power in the hands of a President Bush, you are supporting it too in the hands of a President Hillary Clinton, or Pelosi, etc.  Arguing the power lawfully belongs with one president but not with another is the mentality of a subject, not of a citizen.

Increasingly in a country where, as Thomas Paine put it, "the law is king," the law is less than an afterthought -- it's simply irrelevant.  This trend is not new, but it's worsened under Obama, whose great legacy will be the conversion of what was formally seen as radical, illegal, unconstitutional behavior (by liberals, anyway, and however disingenuously) into mere policy differences partisans will cheer or decry depending solely on which party currently occupies the White House.  We can call this The Obama Effect.

Are You Now, Or Have You Ever Been, A Sock Puppet?

Updated Below

Last week, I wrote a post ("And Why Beholdest Thou The Mote In Thy Brother's Eye…?") about No Sock Puppets Here Please ("NSPHP"), a website established by a group of novelists in reaction to recent revelations of purchased reviews and sock puppetry in the online customer review system.  In my post, I criticized NSPHP for its shoddy execution.  And now, having thought further about purchased reviews, sock puppetry, and the online customer review system, I've concluded that not only was NSPHP poorly executed, it was also mistakenly conceived.

The argument against purchased reviews and sock puppetry, as I understand it, goes more or less like this:

1. If customers learn that deception is part of the online customer review system, they will lose trust in the system.
2. If they lose trust in the system, they will stop using the system, or at least use it much less.
3. If they stop using the system, everyone suffers.

Of these three premises, the only one I can easily accept is the third.  I think online customer reviews have been a huge boon to authors and readers, so yes, if material numbers of customers ceased or diminished their use of the system, I agree it would be unfortunate.  But the third premise depends on the first two, so we ought to examine those.

The first premise is, if customers learn that deception is part of the online customer review system, they will lose trust in that system.

I've done no studies and have nothing to go on here other than my own experience and anecdotal evidence, but I find it hard to imagine that customers don't already realize deception is part of the online customer review system.  Have a look at almost any book -- any product, for that matter -- on Amazon's website, and you'll find some fairly dodgy-looking reviews.  One-star reviews that are vicious, unbalanced, and devoid of any supporting evidence; five-star reviews so over-the-top they sound prepared to start a new religion about the underlying product.  And who hasn't seen a one-star review proudly declaring that the reviewer hasn't even read the book in question, or a five-star review for a product the customer hasn't even taken out of the box yet but is happy over because it was promptly shipped?  So customers must realize, I think, that people leave reviews for all sorts of reasons, many of a type reasonable people would probably agree are unworthy, including the desire to deceive.

And even if customers who hear of purchased reviews and sock puppetry do suddenly come to newly doubt the reliability of the system, how would that doubt manifest itself? A customer who learns that authors are leaving five-star reviews for themselves and one-star reviews for others would, presumably, assign less weight to both, in which case the "damage" caused by the revelations would more or less cancel itself out.  Customers would simply come to look askance at all extreme reviews, positive as well as negative.

But what seems more likely is that, customers already know the online review system is hardly populated by nothing other than disinterested, dispassionate, honest people carefully sifting and weighing evidence before delivering wise and inherently trustworthy judgments.  Customers realize there are many such people writing reviews, but know, too, that there are plenty of scurrilous ones, as well.

If I'm right about what I just wrote, it follows that recent revelations of deceptive practices by authors didn't reveal anything that wasn't already generally known, or at least strongly suspected.  I don't think it follows that anyone ought to be complacent, but the notion that pre-revelation, customers were trusting, and that post-revelation, their trust has somehow been materially damaged, is possibly a bit of a stretch.

Now let's examine the second premise:  If customers lose trust in the online customer review system, they will stop using, or at least use it much less.

I guess this would be true if customers lost all trust.  But take marriage.  An age-old institution that's been pervaded by cheating since probably moments after its inception.  Everyone knows there is cheating within the institution of marriage.  That there always has been cheating, and always will be.  And they react… how?  By refusing to get married? Or do they continue to make beneficial use of the system?

Now this isn't to say we should be sanguine about adultery, or that adultery is admirable.  But what would you say if, in response to revelations that, say, married actors sometimes get visitors in their trailers while on set and that those visitors are not their spouses, a bunch of married people created a website denouncing adultery and beseeching other people to sign their names and enter into monogamous marriages to "drown out the phony voices" and "marginalize to the point of irrelevance" the bad marriages and to "help us clean up this mess?"  I don't know about you, but I'd think that, important as marital fidelity doubtless is, the new website was perhaps a bit of an overreaction.

So imagine an average customer who's familiar with and relies on an online retailer's review system, and who reads somewhere that a bunch of authors got caught buying reviews and using sock puppets to post reviews.  At which point, our average customer does… what, exactly?  Stops relying on customer reviews generally?  Abandons e-commerce entirely?

This strikes me as a huge leap.  I think it's much more likely the average customer will simply modify her approach to using the system.  Maybe she'll get a bit more wary of extreme-sounding reviews (assuming she isn't wary already, and I wouldn't make that assumption).  Maybe she'll start weighting reviews left by Real Names more heavily than others.  Maybe she'll check on how many helpful votes, and what percentage of helpful votes, a reviewer has received.  But to suggest that our average customer will simply abandon, or significantly diminish her use of, the customer review system overlooks how motivated most customers are to use the system.  I see little evidence for such a proposition.  And I can easily imagine that such a customer, who learns by experience how to make better use of the system, could easily become more reliant on, and a more frequent user, of such a system.  All of which leaves me thinking that whatever systemic damage might have been caused by the recent purchased review and sock puppetry allegations is likely to be marginal at best and more likely non-existent.  

So overall, my sense is that customer reviews systems are probably a lot like the Internet itself:  resilient, adaptable, and enticing enough to motivate people to make frequent use of them despite inherent and perhaps even unaddressable imperfections.

I can't help wondering:  in their rush to take NSPHP live, did its authors, in all their internal discussions and deliberations, ever once even ask, let alone consider, this one, simple question:

"How much systemic damage are purchased reviews and sock puppet reviews really causing?"

Of course I don't know.  But I suspect they did not.  The document is devoid of evidence and argument, relying instead only on an unsupported conclusion that purchased reviews and sock puppet reviews are "damaging to publishing at large."  Damaging why?  Because "the health of this exciting new ecosystem depends entirely on free and honest conversation among readers," which, if you pause to think about it for a moment (and I wish the architects of NSPHP had), you realize is absurd.  First, because it's silly jargon (just what is a "free and honest conversation among readers," anyway?).  Second, because whatever kind of "conversation" readers have been engaging in online, it already is free -- in fact, given the many recent calls I've seen for Amazon to crack down on sock puppetry and other forms of deception with new restrictions on reviewing, it seems like the NSPHP crowd finds that online customer conversations ought to be less free, not more.  And third, because as I argue above, whatever kind of "conversation" readers have been having online, it has never been entirely honest, or even close -- and yet the online customer review system continues to thrive.

(As I argued in my previous post, I still think malicious sock puppet reviews, as opposed to self-praising ones, are particularly worthy of censure because both their intent and likely effect is harm to an individual author.  But the more I consider it, the more I think that even malicious sock puppeteers are more pathetic than pernicious.  What's I find distasteful about them isn't so much that they want to harm someone's sales -- that's one of the motives behind every one of the millions of one-star online reviews -- but rather that they seek to cause that harm while protecting themselves from any potential repercussions.  They themselves enjoy the advantages of author comity, while using that comity as a cover from which to attack.  In other words, these people are not just malicious, but cowardly, too.  But damaging to the system overall?  For the reasons I've argued above, that strikes me as a bit of a stretch.)

Given all this, NSPHP strikes me as a significant overreaction.  I'm glad there's such a thing as chemotherapy, but I wouldn't want to use it to treat a cold.

* * * * *

I know at least some of NSPHP's architects have read my original post, and have a feeling at least some will be reading this one, as well.  I hope you'll all consider the points I make here, and particularly my question about whether any of you discussed, or even considered, the question of how much systemic damage is actually likely to be caused by recent revelations of purchased reviews and sock puppet reviews -- and, if you didn't discuss or consider, what might have led to such a critical omission of inquiry.

After reading my previous post criticizing NSPHP's execution, and this one criticizing NSPHP's conception, I would hope some of the website's architects might regret their rush to action, and I suspect some of them do.  And yet I doubt any of them will withdraw their names from NSPHP's front page, or even simply acknowledge that their premises and conclusions were in error; the actions that followed, misguided and disproportionate.

This kind of stubbornness, while regrettable, is also common.  Because once we've acted, our natural desire to justify our actions, to seem consistent, and to "win" in the face of criticism all conspire to make us commit ourselves ever more deeply to the original mistake.  It was easy for me to withdraw my name from NSPHP:  I had committed none of my personal prestige to the site, and in fact argued publicly that it was a very tough call whether to sign in the comments section at all.  But if you are one of the architects of the thing; one of the original signatories; one of the people whose names appear not just in the comments, but on the front page, too; one of the people who have been reaching out to media -- and not without success -- to try to get NSPHP more attention… it is going to be difficult indeed to admit now that the whole thing was misbegotten, and to publicly own up to your error.  The admission would be tantamount to saying, "I held myself up as a leader among writers, and it turns out I was deserving of neither the position nor of the psychic pleasure I derived from it.  My judgment and my reasoning were unsound, and I got carried away on a tide of foolish emotions, most of which I wasn't even particularly aware of at the time.  Like so many people in so many situations before me, I was in the grip of Moral Panic."

Find me someone who can cop to that, and I'll find you someone worthy of admiration, emulation, and a deserved mantle of leadership.  But such people are rare.  And this is one of the reasons it's important to think before acting -- unless you have cast-iron integrity and are unusually self-aware, when you act in haste and repent at leisure, the dynamic that typically ensues insidiously beguiles you into doubling down on a mistake.

* * * * *

Joe Konrath has expressed his views that NSPHP is a kind of witch hunt, and I think he's right -- a conclusion I've reached not just after considering the site itself, but also from watching the behavior of various NSPHP architects.  Two days ago, David Hewson, one of the architects and spokespeople of NSPHP, tweeted in regard to sock puppeteering:

Here's an idea for a new smartphone app. 'Moral Compass'.
— David Hewson (@david_hewson) September 8, 2012

To which I offered:

Only for others, or might you find some use for it, too? RT @david_hewson Here's an idea for a new smartphone app. 'Moral Compass'.
— Barry Eisler (@barryeisler) September 8, 2012

@david_hewson Regardless, let's hope it comes with accompanying "Who Will Guard the Guardians" app, yes?
— Barry Eisler (@barryeisler) September 8, 2012

I think the meaning of my tweets was pretty clear and I don't think they were insulting (certainly they weren't intended as such).  So I was surprised at the response (sorry, no more embeds, having trouble getting them in here consistently... obviously, I need to find a better way to do this.  But you can follow the discussion on David's and my twitter pages, too, if you like):

DH:  Are you the friend then Barry? You OK with it too? http://twitpic.com/aso28h
BE:  So your Moral Compass App is indeed only needed by others and not by you?
DH:  I think it's needed by someone who thinks lying to the public is wrong. Don't you?
DH:  Oops... by anyone who thinks lying to the public ISN'T wrong. Sorry. Early here.
DH:  And I'm quite happy to have my actions judged - that's what you and Joe have been doing all along, haven't you?
BE:  That's twice you haven't answered my simple question, David. I didn't mean it to be this big a deal, just food for thought.
DH:  Twice you haven't answered my question too. Of course I need to look to my own moral compass. Everyone does. I don't…
DH:  think I'm right all the time. But when it comes to condemning lies I don't think it's hard to find a 'moral' position
DH:  So are you the friend Konrath speaks of? Do you agree with his statement there?
BE:  Those are interesting questions, and yes, you have now asked twice. I'll blog about it tomorrow--grateful if you'd link to it.

So... in response to a question about how the guardians of morality will guard their own morality, David twice demanded to know whether I'm friends with someone he disapproves of, whether I discussed something with that person that went into a blog post, and whether I agree with that person's thinking.  In response to my original question, this isn't just a non sequitur.  It isn't just weird (Joe's post began, I had a long talk with a friend last night, and we realized something obvious.  Amazon allows one star reviews.  In other words, the existing system allows and encourages people to publicly trash books.  Honestly, who cares who he was talking to about this?  What could it possibly be relevant to?)  It's also exactly the kind of witch-hunt reflex that's part of what's been making me twitchy about the NSPHP project from the beginning.  It made me think of:

• Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist Party?

• Do you renounce Satan?

• I am making a commitment to myself, my family, and my Creator, that I will abstain from sexual activity of any kind before marriage. I will keep my body and my thoughts pure as I trust in God's perfect plan for my life.

• Arthur Miller's play The Crucible, and how Miller himself was convicted of contempt of Congress for refusing to identify others present at meetings he had attended.

• The work of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, the practice of Red-baiting, the damage done by the Hollywood blacklist, and the methods of McCarthyism generally.

• For punishment does not take place primarily and per se for the correction and good of the person punished, but for the public good in order that others may become terrified and weaned away from the evils they would commit.

• Nothing like a good Auto-da-fe.

• Most of all, Nineteen Eighty-Four, and the concept of Thought Crime.

So David's question struck me telling, and worthy of comment.  I'm a lot less concerned about a sock puppet than I am about an inquisition.  The former might damage commerce.  The latter will damage freedom.  One might think artists in particular would be sensitive about such matters.  Apparently, one might be mistaken.

Now, of course a bunch of overreacting writers isn't capable of the kind of harm caused by religious edicts and government committees and actual mobs.  And I understand it's hard for all of us to get outside our own heads and see ourselves with a little more objectivity (see, for example, We do not torture).  But to me, as I've previously noted, there's more than a whiff of the mob mentality about NSPHP, so it was disappointing to ask what I think is a legitimate question about who will guard the guardians and to get a response that was, in effect, "Denounce the Evildoer Konrath!"

David, if after reading this post you still think that under the circumstances your inquiry about whether I'm the friend Joe mentioned talking to before he wrote his blog post, and whether I share some of his views, is a worthy one, please ask it again in the comments to this post and I'll respond to it in an update.  But I hope you'll realize the unfortunate direction you were heading in and retract the question instead.

* * * * *

A last thought.

The topic of deception in the online customer review system seems to have produced a fair amount of strife among authors, as has the topic of self-publishing vs legacy publishing vs Amazon publishing (actually, I don't think it's a vs situation at all; I think it's wonderful that authors now have real choices, and I encourage all authors to find the mix that's best for them.  But I digress).  Much about publishing that for a long time was taken for granted is changing, and changing rapidly.  It can be confusing and even frightening, and it's understandable that sometimes tempers get short, words are chosen poorly, the benefit of the doubt is withdrawn and the worst quickly assumed.  I've seen some really ugly, petty comments being made about fellow authors, and I know the explanation -- or rationalization -- behind the comments is some version of, "He started it!" or "He deserved it!"

Readers of this blog know I've posted again and again to speak out against torture.  Frequently when I do, someone will respond in the comments with some version of, "But al Qaeda flew planes into buildings and murdered nearly 3000 people!" or "But Khalid Sheikh Mohammed decapitated Daniel Pearl!" or "Do you remember what it was like to watch those people who had to jump to their deaths to avoid being burned alive?"

My response is always the same.  I don't think we Americans ought to base our own system of morality, and our own behavior, on what al Qaeda does or doesn't do.  We're Americans.  We don't do what's right because of what our enemies do.  We do it because it's right.  We don't torture only if al Qaeda doesn't torture.  We don't torture because we're Americans.

On a personal level, what this principle means for me is that whether someone insults me is nearly irrelevant to the issue of whether I should insult him.  If I believe insults are counterproductive -- particularly from the standpoint of persuasion, which to me is the primary legitimate purpose of argument -- then I have to eschew them regardless of whether other people find them hard to resist.  It's that Kantian thing again (David, that was for you. ;)).  Or call it the Golden Rule, if you like.  The point is this:  if you think insults, pettiness, and vindictiveness ought to be avoided, then you ought to avoid them.  Lately, even more so than usual, I see people not only failing to avoid that kind of bad behavior, but eagerly embracing it.  For anyone who believes we should be the change we want to see in the world, this is not just a loss for society -- it's also a personal failure.

Moreover, it's personally corrosive.  From time to time, I've been on the receiving end of some fairly hateful stuff here on the interwebs, and if I let myself get worked up in response, my ego would engage.  It would become important for me to "win" the fight, to hurt the other person back, and suddenly what should be really important to me -- persuasion -- would be not only relegated to the back seat, but smothered back there, too.  Meanwhile, I know my judgement would be occluded.  Rather than keeping an open mind, I would actively seek reasons to hate the person who insulted me, I would screen out evidence that he or she might be other than entirely unworthy, and I would get locked in a cycle where my insults produce more anger, leading to more insults, leading to more anger… etc.

Even if you haven't clicked on any other links in this post, click on and consider this one:  Fundamental Attribution Error.

The good news is, whether you get caught up in the negative emotions, and in the behavior they cause and that then reinforces them, isn't up to anyone else.  It's only up to you.  But it's important to realize the best way to avoid getting lost in the hate thickets is to avoid stepping onto that path in the first place.  Because anger, hate, and self-righteousness can quickly become both their own motivation and their own reward.

If any of this resonates personally for anyone still reading this far, I recommend having a look at, say, your recent Twitter feed.  Do your posts hate the sin but not the sinner?  Are they intended to persuade, or is there some other, less worthy motivation behind them?  Are you proud of what you've been saying, or, in retrospect, a little embarrassed by it because it seems beneath you?

What's that saying?  "Be the person your dog thinks you are."

I know many people will be unpersuaded by what I've written here (for many reasons, including the kind of insidious resistance caused by mistakenly committing to something like NSPHP in the first place).  Which is okay, obviously.  We don't all have to agree.  But hopefully we can disagree with a little less vitriol -- even if we think the other person is directing vitriol at us.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?  I don't know the answer, but I think we have to at least start by trying a little harder to guard ourselves.


Update:

Well, perhaps predictably, David Hewson posted a comment in which he did indeed attempt to interrogate me for a third time:

[Joe Konrath] says in public he talked to a friend and afterwards wrote, 'Buying reviews isn't wrong. Using sock puppets isn't wrong. Leaving fake one star reviews isn't wrong.'

Were you that friend? Do you agree with him that buying reviews, using sock puppets, and leaving fake one-star reviews aren't wrong? It doesn't take 2,000 words of overwritten flim-flam to answer that. So why do you find it so hard?

My response, as promised, with David's comment in italics and mine in plain text (the full exchange is in the comments section):

Joe Konrath, your co-author of so much stuff on this subject…

Joe is my co-author of stuff on sock puppetry, purchased reviews, and NSPHP?

David, could you provide cites -- even just a single cite -- to back up that claim?  And when you can't, will you pause to consider that maybe you're conflating two separate people, perhaps in part because you've become unhealthily obsessed with one of them?

[Joe] says in public he talked to a friend and afterwards wrote, 'Buying reviews isn't wrong. Using sock puppets isn't wrong. Leaving fake one star reviews isn't wrong.'

Were you that friend? Do you agree with him that buying reviews, using sock puppets, and leaving fake one-star reviews aren't wrong? It doesn't take 2,000 words of overwritten flim-flam to answer that. So why do you find it so hard?

I think it's mostly because the way you ask, and the utter lack of self awareness and historical perspective that characterizes your question, makes my skin crawl.

Also, because it's such a bizarre non sequitur in response to a friendly suggestion that you might want to make personal use of your proposed "Moral Compass" app, and not just generously offer it to others.

And finally, I guess, because it pleases me to act in accordance with my own principles.  Because when self-important grandstanders threaten to brand me as Automatically Suspect if I don't jump through their self-pleasuring hoops, it feels like a badge of honor.

I'm sure you'll understand.  After all, you just refused to answer Mr S Puppet's questions in keeping with some principle of you're own -- presumably the principle that you will not have a substantive discussion with a stranger on the Internet unless he first presents you with a Long Form Birth Certificate, or something like that.

Anyway, I can't think of anything better than your own behavior -- here, on Twitter, and at NSPHP itself -- to elegantly support my contention that NSPHP is by default, if not design, congenitally inclined to witch hunt.  Of course we won't see eye to eye on that, but I'm sure we'll also both be satisfied that readers now have ample evidence by with they can consider and judge for themselves.

Updated Again:

Apologies, David, and everyone else -- I mistakenly attributed Gordon's response to Mr S Puppet in the comments to David.  So the penultimate paragraph (or some version of it) in the update above should have been addressed to Gordon, not David.

And Why Beholdest Thou The Mote In Thy Brother's Eye...?

*Updated Below*

In response to recent revelations of novelists buying Amazon reviews and creating sock puppet accounts to praise their own books and trash those of others, a group of writers has come together to post a message -- No Sock Puppets Here Please ("NSPHP") -- condemning these practices, urging other writers not to engage in them, inviting readers to "take possession of the process," and asking "anybody who loves books" to sign the document, too.  I had my own idea for a voluntary code of conduct regarding purchased reviews and sock puppets a few days ago, and overall I'm glad to see that others have thought of, and have adopted, their own approach.  After a lot of consideration, I've decided to add my name (I don't flatter myself that my name would make much difference one way or the other, but still, it's my name) to the message these other writers have posted.  But I did so with reservations, and I'd like to talk about those reservations here.

My first reservation about NSPHP is that it names three recent authors who, to varying degrees, have outed themselves or have been outed engaging in the practices NSPHP addresses (purchasing reviews; self-praising sock puppets; sock puppets attacking third parties).  This made me uncomfortable.  After all, the problem isn't specifically RJ Ellory, Stephen Leather, and John Locke -- the named authors.  These three are just recent examples -- and examples of something probably much more widespread (NSPHP itself acknowledges that "Few in publishing believe they are unique," and if these three were likely the only ones, there would be no need for an NSPHP in the first place).  Why make a document, presumably intended to be relevant and read for many years to come, about three specific examples who are primarily notable because they did what they did in 2012?  Historian Orlando Figes was caught using sock puppets to praise his own work and to attack that of his rivals in 2010, but he isn't shamed by name in NSPHP.  It's not that I object to people like Ellory being shamed -- he's been widely, and, in my opinion, deservedly shamed, including here just now -- but is NSPHP supposed to be about shaming individuals, or about articulating the details of an enduring code of conduct designed to guide authors and reassure readers?  If the latter, the former strikes me as unnecessary, unhelpful, and even unseemly.

My second reservation was about this odd, italicized paragraph:

But the only lasting solution is for readers to take possession of the process. The internet belongs to us all. Your honest and heartfelt reviews, good or bad, enthusiastic or disapproving,­ can drown out the phoney voices, and the underhanded tactics will be marginalized to the point of irrelevance. No single author, ­ however devious, ­ can compete with the whole community. Will you use your voice to help us clean up this mess?

It's hard to know what this is.  I don't know what process readers are supposed to take possession of, or what taking possession of a process would mean.  The only way I can make sense of the whole thing is as a request for readers to post more reviews than they have so far.  Because if the current quantity of "honest and heartfelt" reviews is insufficient to "drown out the phoney voices," then "Will you use your voice to help us clean up this mess" can only logically be a request for readers to post more reviews -- and presumably many more, if any meaningful level of additional dilution of dishonest by honest is likely to occur.

This strikes me as… strange.  Is it really proper to try to recruit readers to post reviews as a way of protecting the integrity of the review system?  Maybe.  But I can't help feeling the most honest and disinterested course of action would be to just leave readers alone and let them post whatever they want for whatever reasons they want.  And that in attempting to recruit readers to join this battle -- even if the suggested weapon is itself honest reviews -- the authors of NSPHP have perhaps muddied their own message.

Now, maybe I'm reading this wrong.  But at a minimum, NSPHP seems susceptible of this interpretation, and I wish it weren't.  I wish the document were clearer and more straightforward in pursuit of its purpose, which I think, as noted in the first paragraph, is the protection of "the health of this exciting new [online] ecosystem."  This separate plea to readers seems, again, an odd and confusing way of furthering that end.

My third reservation is about the use of "unreservedly" in the paragraph, "We the undersigned unreservedly condemn this behaviour, and commit never to use such tactics."  As I mentioned above, adding my name to NSPHP wasn't an easy call.  I believe there's a significant difference between buying reviews, on the one hand, and using sock poppets to trash other authors, on the other (more on this below) -- so in addressing these practices without distinction, am I condemning "unreservedly?"  I'm not sure.  I think I'd rather condemn with some explanation, self-reflection, and nuance.  In the end, I decided NSPHP was likely to do more good than harm, and on that basis, decided to sign it.  But still -- adverbs, as Stephen King pointed out in his book On Writing, are not your friend.  I think NSPHP would have been improved by the absence of this one.

My fourth reservation stems from my belief that, for behavior to be ethically wrong, it has to in some meaningful sense harm others.  And while I find many of the alarums regarding the severity of damage to author finances and to the perceived integrity of the customer review system to be overblown, I do think that, in general, revelations that authors are buying reviews can only weaken reader trust in a system that has been a huge boon to authors (and particularly to indie authors).  For this reason alone, I think it's ethically wrong for authors to buy reviews.  Think of it as an author's version of the Kantian Categorical Imperative:  if all authors did it, all authors would suffer, and by this measure, it can't be right to do.

Self-praising sock puppets are, to me, similar.  Minuscule-to-nonexistant harm, extremely diffused at best, to individual authors, but, in light of revelations and suspicions about such behavior, caustic to the system itself.  And if the system suffers, everyone is to some degree harmed.

(I can't help adding just for proportion that I don't think the average online customer is some sort of naif who accepts the veracity of all online reviews with the unquestioning trust of a child believing in Santa Claus.  We're not talking about the first pollutants in a previously pure system, but rather of additional impurities in something already widely understood to contain a fair bit of turbidity.  This isn't grounds for cynicism or complacency, but again, worth mentioning, I think, to suggest some sense of perspective regarding the degree of likely harm.)

Because I think intent matters, I also have to add my sense that review-buying and self-praising-sock-puppet-deploying authors aren't trying to hurt anyone else.  They're only trying to help themselves.  Yes, at least arguably, there is a likelihood of harm regardless of intent, but in criminal law intent matters, and for me it matters here, too.

This is part of why the use of sock puppets to trash other authors is, for me, another story.  I find it disgusting and not just regrettable, but reprehensible.  In addition to its inherent, direct likelihood of harm to the authors against whom it's directed, it is intended to cause harm.  Harm, not just personal advantage, is its purpose.  Plus it's just so gutless.  Even as a novelist I have trouble getting my head around the notion of someone doing this shit and not realizing there is something seriously wrong in his or her psyche.  We all have unworthy urges, but if you actually do things losers do, doesn't that make you a loser?  Then why are you doing them?

So yes, I find all three practices addressed in NSPHP to be worthy of censure, but not in equal measure.  And I would have liked NSPHP to somehow account for the differences as well as the similarities.  Lumping them all together felt to me a bit like posting a message simultaneously condemning, I don't know, embezzlement and murder.  Yes, they're both bad, but I wouldn't want to suggest they're roughly equivalent, either.  Doing so makes embezzlement sound worse and murder, better. 

Speaking of similarities, my first reaction to these revelations was to find them abhorrent -- even the review purchasing, which upon reflection I consider to be the least of the three.  I've never done any of these things; I reassured myself.  Never even been tempted; never would.  Yea me.

But I didn't stop there.  I asked myself, "Well, okay, you haven't done those things… but have you ever done anything like them?"

And the honest answer was… "Well, for the first book (and maybe the second -- it's been a while), I gave out free copies to friends and family and said, 'Hey, if you like it and you feel inclined, don't be shy about posting an Amazon review...'"

Did I ask for a specific kind of review, or a minimum number of stars?  No.  Did I boost my chances by threatening to impose punishments or withhold favors if proper reviews were not forthcoming?  Of course not.  But come on, I knew these people were kindly inclined and motivated to help me.  They weren't obligated, there was no quid pro quo, but wasn't I at least to some extent trying to game the system?

And then I thought about blurbs, a system I believe is irredeemably corrupt.  Now, I give fewer blurbs than most, and, I suspect, more judiciously than many, but still, I'm hardly without sin when it comes to giving and receiving blurbs.

I thought hard about all this, and it wasn't easy for me to logically distinguish the widespread if not universal practices of review trading and blurb trading among authors, on the one hand, from the practice of buying reviews and self-praising sock puppets, on the other (the use of sock puppets to attack third parties, by contrast, was an easy call -- again, harm is the primary purpose and effect).  In the end, I think I did come to some sound conclusions about how these practices differ, but the reflection it took to get there left me feeling not comfortable or relieved, but rather humbled -- like someone who, in recognizing that he himself is not without sin, ought to be cautious about enthusiastically throwing that first stone.

I mentioned the Kantian Categorical Imperative above:  if all authors did it, all authors would suffer, and by this measure, it can't be right to do.  So I asked myself:  with the Categorical Imperative in mind, are blurb and review trading, and other forms of log-rolling and back-scratching, defensible where purchasing reviews and self-praising sock puppets are not?

I couldn't find a distinction.  Well then, I asked, what about deception?  Deception is at the heart of review-buying and sock puppeteering.  And that's what makes those practices bad.  Absent the deception, the review wouldn't work -- or would at least work a lot less well.

True enough, I thought, but it's not like authors include disclaimers on their blurbs:  By the way, Author X is a buddy of mine, and I'm doing this for her not just as a favor, but in hopes that she'll do me a solid in return. And remember, too, gentle reader, that all blurbs help the giver, not just the recipient, because the giver's name gets thousands of ad impressions when it appears for free on someone else's book.

Look, I know you can distinguish these examples, but I also think you'll find the distinctions are often a matter of degree rather than of kind.  It's like asking when "honest graft" becomes real graft, or what the actual difference is.  Maybe more a matter of social acceptance than of real ethical or logical differences.

Still, in the end, I concluded review buying and sock puppeteering were qualitatively worse than publishing "honest graft."  Here's why.

First, a paid-for review is practically a guaranteed review, and while yes, theoretically the review might be honest and thoughtful, in reality in a paid-for system most reviews will be anything but.  It's an explicit cash exchange -- money for services.  This strikes me as worse than implicit barter.  Still, I think you could argue that implicit barter, because it's more subtle, is also more insidious, widespread, and corrupting.

But I think there's another difference between review and blurb trading, on the one hand, and review buying and sock puppeteering, on the other, a difference that has to do with definitional clarity.  Defining what constitutes a bartered-for review or blurb is difficult.  Identifying a straight cash exchange or a fake Amazon account, on the other hand, is pretty easy.  Easier to define means easier to self-regulate and to police.  Now, the definitional difficulty means that bartered-for reviews and blurbs are always going to be part of publishing.  But I don't think it follows that because we can't cost-effectively fix all aspects of publishing, we ought not bother to try to improve any.

A fifth and final reservation about NSPHP.

Many of the posts on the recent revelations of deceptive practices in publishing felt to me like versions of "Shocked, shocked!"  Others struck me as embarrassingly self-important and sanctimonious:  yes, deception is ugly, and yes, the integrity of pretty much any system is important, but come on, people, we're not talking about whitewashing torture, or concealing safety problems in nuclear reactors, or a ginned-up controversy to persuade people that climate change isn't real.  We write stories.  We sell them online.  Yes, it matters and yes, we need to ensure insofar as possible that it's done with integrity, but it isn't life-or-death.  Perspective.

The emotions I sensed in play in many of the online condemnations I read made me uncomfortable.  Anytime I feel anger, umbrage, dudgeon, outrage, etc -- any emotion that inherently involves a sense of personal superiority -- I distrust the emotion and try to rigorously question whether the sense of personal superiority isn't at least in part what's driving the ostensibly underlying emotion.  Most people would argue that to the extent they feel self-righteous, it's because they feel angry.  In my experience, though, it's frequently the opposite:  they feel angry so they can feel self-righteous.  Multiply this dynamic a bit and you quickly get a mob.

Now, I wouldn't call NSPHP mob behavior, but I wouldn't describe it as maximally well conceived or executed, or a model of dispassion, either.  There are a lot of problems in this document, problems that could have been avoided by the application of just a little more care and consideration.  There are times it comes across, unnecessarily, as the author's answer to the Purity Ring.  So I can't help but wonder… why the rush?  Was this an emergency that permitted no time for that care and consideration?  Of course not.  So then what caused a group of demonstrably smart people -- every one of them a professional writer -- to produce a document as problematic as this one, a document that names bad actors when it should focus on bad actions; that equates pernicious deception with the truly noxious variety; that muddies its own purported purity with a strange and jargon-laden plea to readers?  And the answer, I think, is that they were in too much of a hurry to condemn, and probably because (i) condemnation feels good; and (ii) if there's a hurry, the whole thing must be Very Important.  Exactly the kinds of emotional drivers I've learned to distrust (but which, I hope needless to say, I recognize in part because I struggle with them myself).

This is just my sense -- just my opinion -- and I could be wrong about all of it.  But it leaves me feeling uneasy.  I would have much preferred something shorter, simpler, and less redolent of those untrustworthy emotions.  Maybe:

We're concerned about recent revelations of authors buying -- and creating false accounts ("sock puppets") to post -- online customer reviews.  Although publishing is hardly a perfect industry, and although these specific practices differ in various respects, we believe buying, and using sock puppets to post, online reviews are particularly deceptive practices that degrade the integrity of the online customer review system.  Because we want to protect both the actual and perceived integrity of that system to ensure that it remains useful and trustworthy for authors and readers alike, we're posting here to condemn these practices, and to invite others similarly concerned to add their names to ours.

That's more or less what I would have written, but the NSPHP folks did theirs first and I respect that.  Given that NSPHP is already out there, is garnering signatures, and is backed by some major names in fiction, I don't think it would be productive at this point to try to improve it, or to try to replace it with something better.  Which left me with a fairly simple choice:  do I do more good by signing, or by steering clear?  The document invites people to "put your name behind these sentiments," but it's precisely the sentiments I distrust.  And so this simple choice wasn't an easy one -- which is too bad, because it could have been.

So I signed, but not "unreservedly," and I'll be watching this thing with a wary eye because of the kinds of emotions I sense are partly at work behind it.  And whether or not others agree with my call or anything else I've written here, I do hope all authors will honestly consider the more mundane and more widespread types of corruption endemic to publishing, and what they might personally do to improve those practices given their demonstrated concern about the integrity of the overall system.  All this will require cool heads, a distrust of insidiously self-pleasuring emotions, and the humility fostered by reflection upon the meaning of Matthew 7:3.

Update:

Almost immediately after putting my name to it (with reservations and a link to this blog post, for what that's worth), I've been feeling increasingly uneasy at the way people are rushing to ostentatiously demonstrate their GoodThink at NSPHP.

I've found myself thinking about what it must have been like to be in Congress at the time of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, or after 9/11 when the Patriot Act and Iraq War Resolution were passed.  Too many scared and angry people, too many people afraid of being accused of not supporting the ends because they couldn't condone the means.  Too many people acting in haste and not sufficiently in touch with their real motivations.

(The critical difference, of course, being... what did Henry Kissinger say when asked why academic politics are so vicious?  "Because the stakes are so small.")

Hoping to foster a bit more reflection, I posted at NSPHP the following video.  The moderators removed it (explaining publicly that they did so because they want the comment section to be only for signatures).

Although I think it would have been useful for the NSPHP site to note in advance that the comment section is only for signatures, I respect the right of the moderators to run the site however and for whatever purpose they wish.  But given everything else I've discussed here; given what I've seen since; and given my increasing concern about the applicability of the Two Minutes Hate, I've come to believe I made my close call in the wrong direction.  NSPHP has plenty of engine; what it really needs, I think, is more brakes.  Had I thought of this a little earlier, I would have made the right call the first time around.  But better late than never.  I've asked the moderators to remove my signature.  I think I can better serve authors and readers with disinterested individual commentary than by being just another Me Too.

The NYT, Eager to Serve the CIA

Another proud day for the Newspaper of Record.  Mazzetti is the NYT reporter the CIA selected in 2007 and 2009 to information-launder its "leaks" about the existence, nature, and size of its torture tapes.  I used the incident, and excerpts of Mazzetti's laundering, in Inside Out.  Not surprised to learn more about the extent to which the agency treats Mazzetti like an asset, or that he's comfortable in the role.

I imagine Mazzetti rationalizes by telling himself he's just doing favors for "access."  His masters at the spy agency will have no such illusions about the nature of the relationship.  I'm sure they're grateful for his service.

Update: In response to a question on Facebook, I had this to say:

Anyone who read Mazzetti's reporting would have known how he was being used as far back as five years ago, or longer. In Inside Out, I was just describing what was obvious.

Which is itself interesting:  I had, and needed, no special access to understand how the CIA was running Mazzetti.  Access is overrated.  Critical judgment in media production and media consumption matters much more.  Google I.F. Stone for more...

Everyone Wants To Be Me

Speaking at a campaign event in Colorado two days ago, President Obama, in the course of prattling on about all the things America's the best at (weirdly, he didn't mention income equality, social mobility, health care, poverty, basic education, longevity, or literacy, but never mind), also said this:

"And so no matter what the naysayers tell us, no matter how dark the other side tries to make things look, the fact is there is not another country on Earth that would not gladly trade places with the United States of America."  He concluded by saying that all the best things we're going to do will "remind the world why the United States of America is the greatest nation on Earth."

This reminded me of something.  It's called Narcissistic personality disorder.  Symptoms include:

• Reacting to criticism with anger, shame, or humiliation

• Taking advantage of others to reach their own goals

• Exaggerating their own importance, achievements, and talents

• Imagining unrealistic fantasies of success, beauty, power, intelligence, or romance

• Requiring constant attention and positive reinforcement from others

• Becoming jealous easily

• Lacking empathy and disregarding the feelings of others

• Being obsessed with oneself

• Pursuing mainly selfish goals

• Trouble keeping healthy relationships

• Becoming easily hurt and rejected

• Setting goals that are unrealistic

• Wanting "the best" of everything

Given a choice, would you spend time with someone who not only believed he was the best and the greatest, who not only believed that you and everyone else wanted to trade places with him, but who also loudly and frequently insisted on sharing such views with you?  Would you find such a person a good neighbor?  Trustworthy?  Psychologically stable?

On the other hand, Obama did remind his listeners that America is still a young nation, and maybe this is what he meant:  "In children, inflated self-views and grandiose feelings, which are characteristics of narcissism, are part of the normal self-development.  Children typically cannot understand the difference between their actual and their ideal self, which causes an unrealistic perception of the self."

I think America would be better off on every measure if we could focus more on being a good nation and less on being a great one.

You Will Be Assimilated

Recently, Glenn Greenwald interviewed Chris Hayes about Hayes's new book, Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy.  I have the audiobook cued up in the car, and will start it as soon as I'm done with the one I'm listening to now (Charles Ferguson's Predator Nation: Corporate Criminals, Political Corruption, and the Hijacking of America, which is superb and might become the subject of a subsequent post here).

For me, the most thought-provoking part of the interview came at the end, when Greenwald asked Hayes about Hayes's assertion that even the most well-intentioned people will inevitably be corrupted -- what Hayes calls "cognitive capture" -- by entry into the American elite (aka the One Percent, aka the American Oligarchy).  Given that Hayes, who started out writing for The Nation, is now an establishment TV personality and employee of one of the world’s largest media corporations (Hayes hosts his own talk show, Up with Chris Hayes, on MSNBC), Greenwald wanted to know what steps Hayes is taking to prevent his own cognitive capture.

As someone who deals extensively with questions of subornment in fiction (and who once had some training on the subject, courtesy of Uncle Sam), I found the question itself extremely interesting.  I was also interested -- and, as admirer of Hayes and his work, concerned -- that Hayes really had no answer.  He said he would try to protect himself by continuing to practice what he recognized as good journalism, which he said consists at least in part of ensuring that a wide variety of voices are heard on his show.  But countless people have gone astray before Hayes, and surely all of them -- at least the ones who weren't corrupt to begin with -- promised themselves at least this much, that they would continue to practice good journalism.  And alas, the promise wasn't enough.

So I got to thinking.  What are the warning signs, the real metrics a well-intentioned and clear-eyed journalist should consider before her subornment begins, and by which she can judge whether her integrity is slowly being compromised, corroded, and lost?  It's important to think about these issues in advance.  Cops and soldiers, after all, use when/then thinking to prepare for physical danger.  The principles apply to the danger of subornment, too.

I've come up with a few general warning signs that I think represent a good start.  I hope Hayes, and others, will consider them, and I hope readers will add to them. 

1.  Probably the first compromise will take the form of a rationalization.  You'll be pressured to do something you know isn't quite right.  But you'll be scared not to do it -- if you don't, you'll alienate someone powerful, your career will suffer a setback, your ambitious goals will suddenly seem farther away.  At this point, your lesser self, driven by fear, greed, status-seeking, and other selfish emotions, will offer up a rationalization, and your greater self will grasp at it eagerly.  As Reinhold Neibuhr put it, "hypocrisy… is the tribute which morality pays to immorality; or rather the device by which the lesser self gains the consent of the larger self to indulge in impulses and ventures which the rational self can approve only when they are disguised."

For me, Hayes's first big test came after he said on his show that he was "uncomfortable" calling American war dead "heroes," and I wish Greenwald had asked about this specifically, as it was directly relevant to Greenwald's more general question.  There was a predictable Twitter and blogosphere outcry in response to Hayes comments, and Hayes quickly apologized.  I thought the apology was unfortunate.  Of course my heart goes out to every family that's ever lost a loved one in combat.  But whether it follows from this that every American soldier who dies in combat is automatically a hero is, at a minimum, not a topic that in a democracy should be taboo.

I don't know the extent to which Hayes's apology was heartfelt (personally, I find it incomprehensible).  But my guess is that he felt he had to make it -- perhaps because of pressure from corporate higher-ups; perhaps because he felt that his show wouldn't be properly heeded if he became a poster boy for rightist attacks.

The first compromise will likely be the hardest (and maybe this one was for Hayes), because you've never made one before, or at least not one of this magnitude, and the contrast with your relative purity will be strong. But they'll get easier over time, just as impurities are harder to notice when added to water that's already turbid.  The danger of this increasing ease is part of the reason I blurb so few books.  I won't claim absolute purity when it comes to the abysmally corrupt practice of blurbing; I've found myself (rarely, for what that's worth) in situations where I felt the cost of a no was too high, and I tried to square the circle by saying good things about a book that, while not exactly untrue, weren't exactly from the heart, either.  But I've also said no many times where the no was uncomfortable and a yes would have done me a lot of good.  From the beginning, I've sensed that once you start saying positive things about books you didn't really enjoy (or that you haven't even read), it gets easier and easier, and that the increased commercial success you might enjoy as a result of all those increasingly easy blurbs will be purchased with your own integrity.  The best way out of that trap is not to get into it in the first place.

2.  As the compromises accumulate, you'll need a larger, more all-purpose rationalization to explain them away.  I suspect the most common of these boils down to, "Okay, this isn't my proudest moment, but overall I do more good with my journalism than I do bad.  Plus, if I left this position, it would be filled by someone with (even) greater capacity for compromise, and less capacity for doing good.  So on balance, I have to do this small bad thing in the service of the larger good I do."

If you're especially adept with this rationalization, you should be a politician, where your talents can find their greatest expression.  As a journalist, you're just not being all you can be.

3.  As your career progresses, you can usefully ask yourself if you can name a compromise of which you're not proud.  If you can't… bad sign.

4.  And:  have you ever publicly copped to that compromise?  If not… bad sign (see: "You're only as sick as your secrets").

5.  Can you identify compromises you think have been made by any of your compatriots?  If not… bad sign.  It means you're not even capable of projection.  But if so, try to put yourself in that person's shoes and understand what led him to the compromise of which you're critical.  Are you sure you're so much stronger and virtuous than he is?

I'm sure Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo, for example, started with the best of intentions, but is now attending the White House Correspondents Dinner, America's premier sleaze-fest celebration of government/media cooperation and collusion.  I'm sure Marshall tells himself that breaking bread and yucking it up with the powerful figures TPM purports to hold to account is necessary for "access" and will in no way affect his objectivity or his coverage.  I'm sure David Gregory tells himself the same.  And yet.

What's especially interesting is that Marshall and Talking Points Memo made merciless -- and deserved -- fun of journalists who went "swinging on the tire" at John McCain's Sedona estate during the last presidential election, and adopted the phrase as shorthand "to describe a reporter who has gotten way too cozy with a politician and has had their supposed objectivity affected."  I think this is an instance where a journalist is able to identify the flaws in the behavior of others without being able to apply the underlying principles to himself.  Because is there really a material difference between a barbecue at a politician's estate and a party at the White House?  Not if you think distance is critical to objectivity, but in all things it's easier to criticize the mote in another's eye than it is to come to grips with the beam in your own.

Actually, "Have you accepted an invitation to the White House Correspondents Dinner?" really deserves its own special category because when you get that invitation, and you start thinking about all the reasons you should accept it, warning klaxons should be sounding in your mind.  And I don't mean to single out Marshall.  Andrew Sullivan is another blogger who failed to lash himself sufficiently tightly to the masts of his integrity to resist this particular siren song.  I'm sure both these men are able to explain themselves, at least when they look in the mirror, but they really shouldn't be in a position where they have to do so.  If you purport to cover powerful figures, you can only -- at best -- impede your ability to do so by partying with your charges.  The notion that you have to cultivate these people in order to gain journalistic "access" is such a lie that it could be called out as its own distinct rationalization.

So an exercise:  Identify at least several journalists you once admired, or who you think once had integrity but who no longer do, and ask yourself what happened to them.  Accept that they didn't set out intending to become corrupt; in fact, you should accept that their ethics and intentions were, at the outset, as strong and noble as yours are right now.  To what did they succumb, and why will you be able to resist it when they couldn't?

6.  Do you find yourself identifying more with the public figures you're supposed to hold to account than with the readers and viewers you're supposed to serve?  This identification can take many forms.  Do you worry about whether they'll think you're a "good guy" or otherwise about their good opinion of you?  About whether they'll grant you various forms of access?  About whether they'll invite you to prestige events and speak well of you to their friends?

When Rolling Stone reporter Michael Hastings reported in his article The Runaway General on the kind of disrespect for the civilian chain of command he saw while spending time with General Stanley McChrystal and his entourage, he had to grapple with some of the questions raised in this post (he describes that process in his excellent book, The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America's War in Afghanistan).  He made the right decision, and in so doing, exposed the true values and allegiances of many of his colleagues who think of themselves as journalists but in fact operate as government spokespeople.  The New York Times David Brooks, for example, criticized Hastings for being part of a "culture of exposure" (don't you hate when journalists expose things?).  Also, read CBS reporter's Lara Logan's complaints about Hastings and his article -- especially her obvious reverence for General McChrystal -- and again, you'll find a reporter who has come to identify with the powerful figures she should be holding to account.

And do you find yourself feeling special because of the kind of access you feel you have?  Do your government sources (who are playing you, and if you don't see that, that itself is a bad sign) share secret information with you on background that makes you feel you understand the real world better than do people who are not similarly in-the-know?  These are not good signs and you should watch out for them.  Here's NPR's national security reporter Dina Temple-Raston, who, irritated at a panel discussion at Greenwald's demand for evidence that Anwar al-Awlaki (an American citizen who President Obama had ordered executed) was guilty of the crimes the government accused him of, sought to win the argument by asking, "Isn't it possible that I've seen something you haven't seen?" and reminding Greenwald that "he doesn't do national security for a living."  This is a pristine example of the kind of "cognitive capture" Hayes warns about.

7.  Can you identify a personal or career cost to any of your decisions?  If not… bad sign.  Who will you be offending, and what retribution are you likely to suffer?  Who has the power to reward and punish you, and what are you willing to do to risk losing those rewards and incurring that punishment?

8.  Here's one you wouldn't think a journalist should even need to ask (but you'd be wrong):  are there any public figures you refuse to honestly, objectively, publicly criticize?  If yes… it's worse than bad.  You're already suborned.  You're not even a journalist.

9.  Can you identify any scenarios, any potential compromises, that you would not make under any circumstances, that you would resign over before ever embracing?  If not… bad sign.

10.  Can you put yourself in the shoes of the organization/establishment/oligarchy and imagine how you would go about suborning yourself to get past your defenses?  How would you obscure the true nature of those compromises to conceal them from the target's conscience, how would you package them to make them more easily swallowed and digested?  How would you, knowing yourself, attempt to suborn yourself if you were really determined to bring it off?  Because if you're not thinking like the opposition, you're surrounding yourself with talismans, not protecting yourself with real self defense.

I'm sure there are many more, of increasing specificity (do you print, without compelling reason, shit anonymous sources tell you?), but I think this is a good start.  And obviously, the principles we're dealing with here apply to professions and situations beyond just journalism.

I'm not a journalist, but I do know that when you enter an enormous, shifting system single-mindedly dedicated to beguiling you into surrendering your values and assimilating you, you have to do more than assure yourself you'll practice good journalism.  You have to take the threat seriously, consider how many people have succumbed to it before you, and armor up accordingly.  If you don't, you don't have a chance.  And if you don't think you need to take the threat seriously, you're even more vulnerable, and more likely doomed, than most.

Probably I've just spent more time thinking about these issues than most journalists.  From his response to Greenwald, I gather I've spent more time even than Hayes, who claims "cognitive capture" is a universal consequence to sufficiently prolonged exposure to temptation.  This isn't a good sign.  But I hope this article will prompt at least a few journalists to take more seriously the threat Hayes identifies, but has apparently not yet come to grips with.